Comparisons

I know I’m such a hard critic of the UN. I mean, should I really expect them to have enough time to take care of the problems of the world when such critical work as the dissolving of Switzerland and the re-drawing of the borders of Italy, France and Germany are at stake?

Anyways…

When people often spoke of Iraq as a second Vietnam, there were typically two points, or dimensions, they were trying to show. The first is to say that both wars were misguided and wrong in design. The second is to say that we will lose in Iraq like we did in Vietnam (the moral being that we’d better pull out, because we’re gonna lose anyway).

In addressing only the latter dimension, I say phooey. Anyone who has read anything on the military aspect of Vietnam will tell you that the result was unexpected and very unlikely to have happened. The chances were extremely remote that the NVA, even with the Vietcong, would win. It was a great upset in the course of history. As my dad once mentioned to me, the South Vietnamese were a match militarily all by themselves for the North, before ever adding the US Army into the equation. Additionally, the US won every single battle, yet lost the war. Who could possibly account for that, on a military level? The answer is, no one because we didn’t lose the war on a military level.

Now, back to the Iraq war. The US had a much better trained, funded, equipped and prepared military in 2003 than in 1965. Comparing the two wars for the purpose of arguing that we will also lose the Iraq War is like saying ‘well, I got struck by lightning on a clear day on October 5th in 2008, and now it is another clear day on October 5th 2009, so I better not go outside because I imagine I’ll be struck by lightning.’ Who would say that?

One problem with comparing the two wars in order to show we will lose in Iraq is the fact that the casualty rates are extremely different. In six years of war we have lost about 4000 soldiers in Iraq. In the eight years of direct involvement of US troops in Vietnam fifteen times more soldiers died (about 60,000). Wounded rates show a similar disparity with Vietnam involving ten times more than the Iraq war (about 300,000 to 30,000).

I find it difficult to believe we’re going to militarily lose the Iraq war with such low casualty rates. As far as I understand, this is an unprecedentedly low death rate for any conflict of similar scale.

After all this, let me change my mind and state that the comparison arguments are correct: if we lose the post 2003 counter-insurgent portion of the Iraq War,* it will not be because our military failed, it will be because our politics and policies fail. And that is an accurate comparison to Vietnam.

*[because we must acknowledge that technically the US already won the Iraq War by demolishing the old Iraq army and regime in three weeks in 2003].

Now, if we are so awesome, how come we can’t just win these wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? The answer is because we aren’t fighting a war with either Afghanistan or Iraq anymore. Both of these countries are great allies with us, since late 2001 and mid 2003 respectively. We are trying to a) stabilize their infant democracies, b) inoculate their governments against corruption, 3) eliminate the extremely evil and violent insurgents and jihadists who blow up schools, mosques and weddings, and 4) train armed forces and police to be self-sufficient in fighting these terrorists without the US.

In case you didn’t know, only the last half of those goals are what the US military does. In fact, only number 3 is what the military really does.
Not only is the military doing jobs it is not meant to do, but it is doing them under conditions that did not exist in other similar scenarios. Let me explain this by comparing the development of democracy in Iraq and Afghanistan to that in Japan and the US.

Japan: after World War II it took seven years for the US to export democracy to Japan.

US: declared independence in 1776, but it wasn’t until 1791, fifteen years later, that both the Constitution and Bill of Rights had been created and ratified. However you interpret when the real birth of the US democratic republic was, it was necessarily several years after 1776.

So, as a first comparison, it takes time
Don't expect the current 'wars' which are actually counter-insurgencies coupled with nation building do do wonders instantly.

But there are also some differences to be appreciated:

• Neither Japan nor the US had severe poverty (both peoples at the two times actually being among the richest on earth (although Japan had been devastated by war)). Afghanistan nevertheless had far severer poverty and Iraq wasn’t exactly swimming in wealth, having been bankrupted by Saddam.
• Neither Japan nor the US had intense drug problems like Afghanistan.
• And most stunningly of all, neither Japan nor the US had violently radical factions who are willing to kill their own people in order to kick out the foreigners who are seeking to help their people (which in a word, is insanity).

I’d have to say that these are significant differences. Be patient. Don’t give up. Let the military have all the resources it needs. Let our allies in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Pakistan) have all the resources they need. We need more stable democracies in the Middle East.* Heck, we need more stable democracies in the world. We must succeed in Afghanistan because if we do not, then necessarily, yes necessarily, it will revert to the ultra-oppressive, international terrorist-sponsoring, major drug-producing cesspool it was.

*[it would be great to have more than one (Israel), wouldn’t it?]